


Side Effects

by local_doom_void



Series: Anamimirce [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Cockney Voldemort, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Horcruxes, Howlers (Harry Potter), Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's the Dursleys, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), They're not major so I did not tag as such
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21676507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void
Summary: Secrets of the Darkest Artesdid not include any 'side effects may include...' disclaimers. It did not include any warnings about prior censorship, either. Voldemort did not expect to experience major cognitive shifts after age fifty, but clearly, he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to soul magic and its interaction with teenagers.
Series: Anamimirce [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1562626
Comments: 35
Kudos: 192
Collections: Tomarrymort Live Writes





	Side Effects

**Author's Note:**

> Significant portions of this fic were written on the Hood, a writing sister server to the Chamber of Secrets. Asterismal, Atlanta_Black, and Wynnebat know who they are, the enablers.
> 
> All aboard the Chaos Train!

Harry stumbled out of the lift and into the Ministry atrium, one leg dragging behind him a bit awkwardly. Somebody – he hadn’t seen – had managed to nail him with a slicing hex. He was choosing for the moment to imagine that it was nothing nastier than a slice taken out of his flesh, because he didn’t have time to worry about curses for now. His leg would be fine, he told himself. It was just numb because he had banged it against the floor of the lift in his effort to stumble in while it was in the process of moving away, and also avoid being crushed by the doors.

He looked around. The atrium was quiet, the only sound the dull trickle of water down the stone fountain. It echoed off the empty spaces and drew Harry’s attention to the high dome of the ceiling. It looked like a skylight, right up there at the top, and Harry wondered for a second if the Ministry of Magic was literally built inside of a spittingly modern skyscraper covered in mirrored glass.

There was no sign or sound of Bellatrix.

Shaking his leg once more, Harry was pleased to note that he didn’t feel as numb. Just banged up, then – he’d probably have a bruise tomorrow if he got out of this, but that was a problem for future Harry. He adjusted his pants leg and carefully crept out into the open, making for the fountain.

A floo flared bright green down by the end of the entrance hall. Harry’s breath caught and he dove for the fountain without thinking. When there was no yell, he carefully peeked over the lip of it.

There was a man striding briskly toward the fountain. Harry kept himself as low and still as possible, hoping he was hidden. The stranger was too far away to tell much for now – dark robes, which were common in wizards, and dark hair, and light skin. The robes were knee-length, and swished ominously as he walked.

The man drew closer. Harry squinted, feeling suspicious, and tried to shift a little so he could get a better view.

This was a mistake.

The man’s face snapped to his, and a pair of bright scarlet eyes met Harry’s straight on. Harry panicked as he recognized the height, the stride, and the slightly wavy hair as a very possible aged-up police poster of Tom Riddle. The mouth curled, then, and the man –  _ Voldemort, had to be _ – whipped out a thin white wand and blasted the fountain directly near Harry’s head. Harry took cover and somehow managed to avoid anything worse than being bruised by stone rubble. Water splattered over him, and he ignored the throbbing cut on his leg in favor of getting his feet under him. Footsteps – he dodged away from them, trying to get something else between him and the Dark Lord. Maybe he could aim for the registry desks? Or call a lift and run and dodge and somehow get into it afterwards, but Voldemort was sure to see through that.

Where was he?

Harry stared round the fountain and caught sight of Voldemort’s robes between the legs of the centaur statue. The centaur itself was sans human torso. He wouldn’t be able to get much of anywhere if he had to run through the open atrium and Voldemort could take potshots at his leisure, so Harry took aim as the man came into full view and yelled “ _ Expelliarmus! _ ” with as much ferocity as he could muster.

To his immense relief, the white wand shot from Voldemort’s hands. Relief turned to horror when it did not hit the floor, and instead swung briefly on a short piece of string. With a flourish, Voldemort snapped it back into his hand.

That wasn’t  _ fair _ .

Harry stumbled back and tried to circle around the fountain again, because he was in full view. The flagstone beneath his feet jerked up suddenly and catapulted him into the air. For a few moments the world was a confusing blur of dark blue-black Ministry walls and white streaks, and then Harry crashed to the floor. The air whooshed from his lungs – numb fingers groped for his wand, but couldn’t find it. When had it deserted him?

His vision stopped spinning only to show him Voldemort standing over him. The holly wand was clenched in the Dark Lord’s free hand, and the man’s red eyes were narrowed down at Harry in something that Harry would have called ‘approaching consternation’ on anybody but Voldemort.

“Voldemort,” Harry snarled, struggling to sit back up. He needed his wand back, he thought desperately. How could he get it back?

“Potter,” Voldemort said slowly. His mouth and brows were still twisting up, as if he had bitten into something especially bitter. Harry opened his mouth to say something infuriating, hopefully to distract the man for long enough for Harry to – do  _ something _ . Voldemort beat him to it, though.

“Potter, how old are you?”

Harry gaped for a moment. Then he remembered himself, and glared. “You  _ know _ how old I am – ”

“Answer the bloody question!” The Dark Lord surged forwards without warning. His hands grabbed at Harry’s shoulders, and though Harry braced himself for the burning pain, none came. His shock made him totally lose track of their two wands, and when he next tried to check, he could see neither of them.

He glared at Voldemort and grabbed the man’s wrists, trying to wrench the intruding hands off of him. Still no pain – still bewildering. Voldemort ignored his efforts and hauled Harry to his feet with a strength that was frankly terrifying if it wasn’t due to some kind of magical ritual he had used on himself. Harry sort of hoped he had used a ritual on himself. It would be in character.

“How  _ old _ , Potter,” Voldemort hissed at him, getting so close their noses almost touched. Harry couldn’t tell if the words were Parseltongue or not. He was trying to work out something appropriately sarcastic to say, but the fact that Voldemort had a nose was distracting him. His skin was normal again – he had hair. When had this gone down?

“I’m fucking 15,” he snarled back, stil unsure whether or not it was a hiss. What a disappointing showing. He really hoped those weren’t going to be his last words. “Shouldn’t you  _ know _ that? Seeing as you’re bloody obsessed with me and all?”

That was better. He could live – well, more like die – with that.

The red eyes narrowed impossibly further. Harry noted with vague worry that, for all that everything else had returned to normal, the pupils still seemed a bit more diamond-shaped than should have been human. And red, of course. People didn’t really have red eyes. He was getting a rather spectacular view of red eyes on somebody at least human-shaped, though, as Voldemort’s eyes went abruptly from narrow to wide. The pupils shifted shape again, looking almost round enough to fool him if he hadn’t just seen the slits, and the grip on his shoulders loosened. Harry tried to shove the older man – Voldemort shoved him in return, and Harry fell back to the floor.

The Dark Lord pulled Harry’s wand from up his sleeve and threw it down at the ground. It clattered and rolled a little until it rested against the sole of Harry’s trainers.

“You’re 15 years old,” Voldemort was snarling, as Harry glanced warily between his wand and the potentially murderous dark wizard. “You are a  _ child _ .”

“Oi – ”

“Why are you even here?!” Voldemort paused, grimaced, and pinched the bridge of his nose. Good for him, the massive git. “Nevermind. Potter, go home. We’re done here.”

“Uh?” Harry said, very eloquently.

“I said,” Voldemort grit out, jabbing a long finger towards Harry, “we are done here, Potter. Go back to school.”

“What, and get murdered there instead of here?”

But Voldemort was already stalking towards the lifts. Harry supposed, if he was a  _ proper _ Boy-Who-Lived-to-Fight-Voldemort, he might have taken the opportunity to shoot a spell at the man’s back. Even a bat-bogey hex would have been debilitating and also a hilarious once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Imagine being able to say he’d once cursed the bloody Great Dark Lord Voldemort so that his own bogeys turned into bats and attacked him. It would be pretty brilliant, really.

But he was very, very confused. So he only watched in bewilderment as Voldemort sank out of sight. Then he lay back on the floor, and stared up at that maybe-skylight he had noticed earlier.

Harry was still sitting there in bewilderment when Voldemort led a bloody great troupe of Death Eaters out of the lifts. A few of them were being levitated – Harry felt rather fierce about that, since it meant his friends had at least managed to get some knocks in. Go DA. Go Dumbledore’s Army. Harry saw Lucius Malfoy staring at him in bewilderment, and gave him the bird. It was more than worth it to see the man do a double-take. Ponce.

“I still hate you and everything you stand for!” he yelled for good measure as Voldemort flooed away. “Prat.”

Harry picked up his wand and cast an  _ Episky _ on his leg for lack of anything better to do. Then he went and tried to go find everyone, but they had pre-empted him and were already coming up the lifts. In the end everyone was alive – apparently Voldemort had even given Hermione some kind of medical attention which meant she was awake and only slightly acid-burned, instead of being attacked by tentacle-brains, which was terrifying in all its aspects. Everyone agreed, though, that Voldemort doing medicine was far more terrifying than tentacle-brains.

They ended up sitting around on the ruined fountain statue. Ron hauled himself up onto the back of the broken centaur and started a rousing chant against Death Eaters, Dark Lords, and bastards of all sorts that everyone gladly joined in on. They were still at it, Luna making the spilled water dance and turn all sorts of colors, when the floos all started to flare and spill out Order members. Harry didn’t spare much more than a glance for them. He was actually having quite a lot of fun after his frankly fucking terrible year, thanks.

“Oi!” Ron yelled, waving a broken piece of marble around. “You’re too bloody late! We chased him off, the bastard snakeface git!”

“You’d think we’d been drinking,” Hermione huffed, scooting closer to where she was pressed against Harry. They were sitting on an unbroken lip of the fountain and really had no inclination of moving anytime soon.

“It’s er, post battle craziness,” Harry said, trying to sound wise. “I had a nervous laughing fit in the Chamber after the basilisk, you know?”

“That’s called an endorphin rush, actually,” Hermione said. “After you survive a scary event your brain releases this chemical called dopamine.”

“What the fuck? Of course you know about it.”

“Harry!” he heard Sirius yelling. The man raced over to him. “Merlin, are you alright?! Snape said You-Know-Who was supposed to be here – ”

“Yeah, he was here,” Harry said simply. “We had a grand time until he left in a huff.”

“What?” Sirius said. Remus had in the meantime caught up, and began to cast diagnostic and healing charms all over Harry and Hermione. Tonks and Arthur Weasley were trying to get the punch-drunk Ron down from the statue, which reminded Harry of the destruction when Voldemort had blasted it.

“I’m not paying for fountain damages,” he declared. “Voldemort’s the one who blasted it up.”

“Harry, you’re not making any sense,” Sirius said as Remus forced a potion into his hands. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“He called me a child!”

Remus frowned. “Who did?”

“Bloody Voldemort! He got all brassed off about it!”

“I think I may need to go to Saint Mungo’s,” Hermione interrupted. “I was attacked by tentacle-brains.”

“Oh yeah, good point. Hermione was attacked by tentacle-brains.”

Kingsley yelled everyone into the floos then. They managed to get out just as the first pop of bewildered night Aurors apparated near the ruined fountain.

The Dark Lord Voldemort, general scourge of wizarding Britain, was suffering an attack of conscience. He didn’t enjoy suffering such a thing – it was useless, and generally a waste of time. He had also never experienced such a thing before, not really. Not until…

He frowned, and shook his head. Red eyes focused instead on the small pot of porridge in front of him. For a moment he contemplated adding fruit to it, but he didn’t know what fruit would be most appropriate without being too intensely flavorful. He settled for adding a very slight hint of sugar instead, stirring it in until he was certain it had thoroughly disappeared. At a taste, it was exceedingly boring, and perfectly lukewarm, which meant it was perfect.

So. Potter was fifteen years old.

Voldemort tried to remember what he had been like at fifteen. An idiot, first of all, he supposed. Why had he ever thought opening the Chamber would be a good idea? It decidedly was not, and Voldemort couldn’t properly remember how he had justified it to himself at the time. Not that that mattered – it had been stupid. They had all been quite stupid. Potter was undoubtedly just as stupid.

Morgana’s spine, he was fifteen! The boy hadn’t even taken his NEWTs yet, and Voldemort was worried about him as a threat? Or had been worried, he supposed, glaring at the crystal ball that he had plucked off the shelf in the Department of Mysteries. In the end, the Ministry still wasn’t even bothering to acknowledge that he was back. At this point it had gone from being hilarious and useful to being almost pathetic. What was the point of being a Dark Lord when the local governing body refused to acknowledge your existence, and the ones who did sent  _ teenagers _ to fight you? At the very least, if Severus was to be believed, they did not disabuse children of the idea that they might be expected to go fight the Dark Lord, to the extent that they took things into their own hands when they saw a threat rather than  _ reporting it to the adults _ .

He filled a bowl of porridge for himself, flash-heated it, and added a number of strawberries and a generous helping of brown sugar. The first bite burned his tongue, but he welcomed it, for it helped to clear his mind.

The state of things, then. Potter was fifteen. So were all the children they had encountered in the Department of Mysteries a couple nights ago, except perhaps that girl who had glowered at him while he healed her and informed him snootily that she was sixteen, thank you very much. Being fifteen, they were untrained and stupid teenagers who had no business being out and about on a battlefield…

Admittedly, he had tempted Potter there. He supposed… he should not have done that. He refused to be guilty about the incident in the graveyard, because Harry’s blood had been necessary for his resurrection.

Oh for fuck’s sake. The boy had been  _ fourteen _ then. Voldemort slapped a hand to his face and cursed the post-resurrection endorphine high that had led him to acting more like a psychotic manic than a rational human. He should have knocked the boy unconscious at the outset, really… but he didn’t trust Pettigrew to be able to hold a  _ Stupefy _ . It had been a miracle that he had managed to train  _ Avada Kedavra _ into the man.

He glowered at the wall. Speaking of children, he thought with ire: how  _ old _ was Potter when he and the boy had confronted each other over the philosopher’s stone? Eleven? Because  _ sweet Circe _ . Voldemort hadn’t even been going after Potter that school year, but Potter had inserted himself into Voldemort’s business. He had spent  _ months _ working past the handicap of Quirrell and scouting out the location to ensure he had a good idea of what he would encounter in his expedition. And then suddenly the tasks had dropped in difficulty, with no discernable reason, and suddenly Potter had been there…

Voldemort nearly dropped his porridge.

In the end, nothing really came of the late-night infiltration of the Department of Mysteries, which felt very odd to Harry. He was used to things happening quite close to the end of the year, and the chaos never quite calming down until he returned to the Dursleys. This time, though, barely anyone had even noticed that Harry and his friends had done something crazy yet again, because nobody had managed to figure out that it was them. Somebody (Dumbledore said Voldemort – Harry was inclined to believe him) had forcibly stopped all the wand signature records and even disabled some important Ministry wards throughout the night. The end result was that nobody knew who had caused the vandalism of the fountain. Harry was pretty alright with that, because even though he had  _ seen _ Voldemort being the only one responsible, the current Ministry most likely wouldn’t believe him, and would have tried to claim Harry did it.

Instead, he settled down with some discomfort, because he didn’t know what was going on. The dreams had stopped abruptly. He called Sirius and Remus every day on his two-way mirror. He went to classes. Snape gave him a week of detentions for the Ministry escapade, “in lieu of proper legal punishments”, but Harry didn’t really mind that either.

He couldn’t stop thinking about how Voldemort had called him a child. Where did he get off, anyway? And just walking away from their fight! Harry hadn’t expected to be as mad about that as he was, but he was spitting mad. He’d had Harry in a very murder-able position, and just hadn’t done it? Why?

Eventually, he complained about it to Hermione. She prompted him for the full story. He told her. She listened intently, and then sat down with a frown on her face.

“You’re sure that’s exactly all he said?” she asked. “Word for word?”

“Pretty exact, yeah.”

“Hm,” she said, and made a face that Harry knew meant he shouldn’t try to talk to her for at least three hours.

“You got me, mate,” Ron said when he went to Ron during those three hours for a second opinion. “He’s a crazy bloke.”

“That’s definitely true,” Harry said, rolling his eyes.

“He was that mug with the evil-looking cheekbones and the red eyes, right?” Ron went on, lowering his voice.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Harry said.

“Thought you said he looked like a snake.”

“He did! In the graveyard. I didn’t expect him to have hair and a nose now.”

“Bastard doesn’t deserve hair that nice.”

Hermione came back to the common room about three hours and fifteen minutes after Harry had first spoken to her. But instead of heading for Harry and Ron, she marched over to one of the study tables that wasn’t currently in use and climbed onto a chair. Collectively, the entire common room – usually quite chaotic and loud – quieted down, because Hermione Granger was standing on a chair, and she didn’t do things like that.

“Listen up everyone!” Hermione yelled. “I need a housewide opinion on certain events! Also, everyone deserves to know who actually wrecked the fountain at the Ministry!” Off to the side, Harry heard somebody choke on their drink. “Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, are you willing to talk about it with me?”

Ginny leapt onto the table before Harry and Ron could say anything and struck a pose. Neville looked merely a little green. 

Harry and Ron exchanged glances. Ron shrugged. Harry sighed. They both got up and sat on the edge of the table.

“I’m good, I think,” Neville said quietly from the crowd.

“Merlin, Nev!” Ron cried. “You hexed out all of Bellatrix Lestrange’s teeth but you don’t want the common room looking at you?” The house broke into murmurs, some verging into full on yells.

“She deserved it,” Neville muttered darkly. Harry was inclined to agree.

“Let him stay out of it,” he sighed, glancing at Hermione. “Besides, I’m the one you really want participating, right?”

“Well, we were all there, and we did all see him,” Hermione said shortly. “But alright.”

They launched into the story rather organically. People gasped in outrage at Umbridge, laughed when Hermione tricked her, were a strange mix of quiet and nervously laughing when they rode thestrals to London. A hush fell as they described breaking into the Department of Mysteries. Harry was a little glad Percy had graduated, as he imagined the boy would have choked on air as Ron and Ginny gleefully described things that were undoubtedly supposed to be complete secrets. When the Death Eaters arrived, there were gasps – when they all split up before they could be ambushed, there were a few cheers.

“This is where it gets a bit odd,” Hermione said. “Harry, if you would?”

“Er. Sure,” he said. “Well. We split up, as you imagine. Somebody nailed me in the leg in the dark. I got into one of the lifts and actually ended up in the atrium. Then a certain git came out of the floo.”

“No way,” somebody said from the back.

“I mean, believe what you want I guess,” Harry snapped. “But I think I know a Voldemort when I see one.” There were shrieks. “Oh will you bloody stop? He doesn’t even look like a snake anymore. He’s got black hair, red eyes, really pale skin, and terrible cheekbones.”

“Evil-looking,” Ron added. “Really extremely evil sort of cheekbones.”

“Knife-like, really,” Ginny said frostily.

“I’m sure his cheekbones are great and all, but can we move on?”

“I’d like to hear more about the cheekbones, actually,” called out an older year that Harry didn’t recognize exactly.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?!” somebody else said.

“Children,” Hermione snapped.

“Sorry.”

“Right, so,” Harry said. “I hide behind the fountain. Voldemort’s walking to the lifts. I couldn’t tell it was him exactly at first because I wasn’t expecting the hair, so I accidentally let him see me. He decides it’s a good idea to make the fountain explode. I manage to dodge that. He runs at me, we do the fountain loop de loop because fuck us I guess. I hit him with an Expelliarmus but the bastard had tied his wand to his wrist with string!” Harry allowed himself a short minute to fume at that.

“Didn’t you expelliarmus him in the graveyard?” came another heckler.

“Well, yeah?”

“Maybe he learned from the experience.”

“Voldemort? Learn from an experience?” Harry scoffed. “Please.”

“I’m just saying…”

“Well, either way, he had it,” Harry pouted. “It was so unfair, honestly. I was surprised so he had a good line of sight to do something to the flagstone under me, it basically flipped me over like a springboard and I lost ahold of my wand.”

“Sounds like maybe you should learn from his example,” somebody muttered.

“Oi fuck off! Who said that?!”

Nobody spoke up, so Harry had to continue. “Well, I got my bearings back and he was standing over me. Then instead of trying to murder me like I expected, he just asks me how old I am.”

Silence.

“What?” somebody called.

“I know, it makes no sense,” Harry said. “We bantered a bit and I told him I was 15 – which is true.” He shot a glare at the crowd. “Then he got all brassed off about it for no reason. I mean, it’s not a secret I’m 15, right? But he acted like I’d spat on his favorite book and told me to go back to school, and that we were done here.” Harry sat back against Ginny’s leg and sighed. “Then he stalked off before I could do anything, took all his Death Eaters, and left.”

“We all saw him, too,” Hermione said. “Some from farther away than others.”

“He was really irritated with them all,” Ginny offered. “I saw him hex Lucius Malfoy.”

Hermione nodded shortly, and took a breath. “I was attacked by some…. unusual creatures down there,” she said shortly. “So I was actually out of it for much of this. The reason I’m not still in Saint Mungo’s recovering is because I was given emergency medical attention pretty quickly. You can imagine my general shock when I wake up to a Dark Lord bent over me muttering about ‘bloody stupid kids’.”

Silence, again. Harry imagined you would have heard a cat purring in the distance.

“So here’s the thing,” Hermione said. “Harry is bewildered by what happened. Who else is bewildered?”

A fair number of hands went up. Harry added his to the mix after some deliberation, and saw that Ginny and Ron were also eagerly participating.

“Right, well, keep your vote in mind, then,” Hermione said. “Who thinks they have some idea of what’s going on?”

Oddly, a fair number of hands went up for this question as well.

Harry stared at them in bewilderment. “What do you all think you know about it?” he called out. “I’m the only person here who’s even ever spoken with Voldemort!”

“Actually, Harry, I exchanged maybe three sentences with him while he was healing me.”

“I – yeah, but you’re Hermione. You  _ know _ things.”

“It’s because you’re  _ fifteen _ , you tosser!” somebody yelled. There were general shouts of agreement before Harry could figure out who it was so that he could defend his honor, and suddenly the entire common room was yelling. The argument, it seemed, boiled down to whether or not Voldemort realizing Harry was 15 years old would make him change anything about his behavior, which Harry just did not see happening – but most of the muggleborns really thought it would. After a certain point, he didn’t even know who he was arguing with – just that he was.

Finally an end was put to it when McGonagall burst through the portrait hole with an unholy light in her eyes and admonitions to “ _ Get to bed! _ ”

The argument had not ended, despite everyone being forced to abscond to bed. The next morning at breakfast, the Gryffindor table was subdued. Muttered conversations fled up and down the length of the table. People jumped from one cluster to another, arguing quietly in hushed voiced about politics and morality, a pastime that Harry had never expected to be joined together. The unusual solemnity of Gryffindor was catching the attention of the other houses – Harry accidentally locked eyes with more than a few Hufflepuffs staring over at the red and gold table, trying to get a sense of what was going on. He pointedly ignored them, not really wanting to get into it. Snape was glaring at him every so often, as if he suspected Harry of inciting the entire table to their unusual behavior. Well, Harry supposed, maybe that was technically true. But technically it had also been Hermione’s fault. She had gotten up on the chair first, after all.

Harry was involved in a low conversation with Neville when there was a susurrus of noise across the hall. Nothing seemed off when he looked up – but Ron elbowed him harshly in the side. “Mate,” he hissed. “Look at that!”

“What?” Harry said.

“Somebody sent Dumbledore a howler.”

Harry looked. Shockingly, it was true. The bright red letter hovered just off the table above Dumbledore’s plate. The headmaster was staring at it with pursed lips, as if trying to ascertain who had sent it by gaze alone. The other teachers at the head table were looking at one another with confusion and bewilderment. Harry noticed McGonagall subtly scooting her chair to the side, away from Dumbledore.

The letter was at this point beginning to smoke.

“Open it!” somebody shouted from the Ravenclaw table. The Great Hall, slowly going quiet as more people noticed the letter, fell finally, totally silent. As one they stared at the howler with anticipation.

Dumbledore went to draw his wand. The letter fell open before he could get it all the way out.

“DUMBLEDORE,” snarled a loud, male voice. Dumbledore made a motion with his wand as if to cast it away, but whatever spell he had meant glanced off the letter as if it were merely a beam of sunlight.

Harry’s heart jolted. That voice, it sounded…

“HOW ARE YOU THE HEADMASTER OF A SCHOOL?” the voice went on. “YOU HAVE HAD LITERALLY DECADES OF TIME TO WITNESS CHILDREN UP CLOSE AND RECOGNIZE HOW STUPID THEY CAN BE. YET YOU STILL SEND FIFTEEN YEAR OLDS TO FIGHT ME?!”

“I’m  _ sixteen _ , the wanker,” Hermione muttered darkly. Harry put his head in his hands and tried to decide whether to cry or laugh.

Merlin. Voldemort had sent Dumbledore a  _ Howler _ . He didn’t know what to think. He had never expected something like this!

The Hall was silent as the Howler-Voldemort voice continued. “YOU REALIZE THAT I AM A DARK LORD AND I HAVE AT LEAST SOME EXCUSE FOR NOT NOTICING? I AM EXPECTED TO BE A BIT EVIL. By the way, student body, as this should be being said in the Great Hall – Greetings, I am Lord Voldemort, and I am very definitely back regardless of the bloody pathetic Ministry’s byline. BACK TO YOU, DUMBLEDORE. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE FOR NOT NOTICING. ARE YOU INTENTIONALLY SENDING A CHILD TO WAR AGAINST A SIXTY-EIGHT YEAR OLD IMMORTAL DARK LORD? DOES BRITAIN NO LONGER FOLLOW THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS?”

“He knows what the Geneva Conventions are?” Hermione stage-whispered. It would have carried in the silence, had not Voldemort continued his rant.

“HERE I AM, MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS OF OVERTHROWING THE MINISTRY, AND I FIND YOU HAVE SOMEHOW CONVINCED A LOAD OF CHILDREN THAT RUSHING OFF TO CONFRONT ME – THE LITERAL DARK LORD – IS SOMETHING THEY CAN TOTALLY JUST DO?? AN’ IT WILL SOMEHOW BE FINE?? THEY’RE BLOODY FIFTEEN! D’YOU NOT TEACH COMMON SENSE AT YOUR SCHOOL? WHY DID YOU EVEN ALLOW ME TO KIDNAP POTTER AT THE END OF THE TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT?? I DIDN’T EVEN EXPECT THE TRIWIZARD PLAN TO WORK! BARTY PROPOSED IT ON A LARK! WE WERE FLABBERGASTED WHEN IT WORKED! YOU COULD HAVE BLOODY WELL GOTTEN ‘IM OUT OF IT, WHY DIDN’ YOU?”

Wait, Harry heard himself yelling from somewhere quite distant of himself. What? What the fuck do you mean by that? But it was merely a recorded voice, and Voldemort didn’t pause to answer his questions.

“BLOODY ‘ELL, YOU ‘AD TO KNOW THAT THEY WERE PLANNIN’ DRAGONS! YOU JUST LET YOUR FOURTEEN YEAR OLD WARD GO UP AGAINST DRAGONS?? WHAT WAS GOIN’ TREW YOUR MIND? OH ‘E CAN DEFLECT A-K’S, SURELY ‘E’LL DEFLECT A DRAGON’S TEEF?? PHYSICAL SHARP THINGS ARE VERY DIFF’RENT FROM MALICIOUS CURSES!

“AN’ THAT’S NOT TO EVEN MENTION THE WHOLE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE INCIDENT! I BLOODY WELL KNOW YOU CHANGED THE ENTIRE TRAP SET-UP LAST MINUTE! YOU FOOKIN’ WANKER! I WAS BUILDIN’ ARITHMANTIC TESSERACTS ALL YEAR TO BREAK YOUR WARDS WITHOUT YOU NOTICIN’ AN’ DEN YOU FOOKIN’ DISRESPECT ME BY REPLACIN’ THEM WID’ A CHILDREN’S OBSTACLE COURSE FOR FIRST-YEARS AN’ LETTIN’ THEM RUN ROUGHSHOD OVER IT? THEY WERE ELEVEN!”

“Is… is that Cockney?” Harry heard Dean whisper. “Is You-Know-Who a  _ Cockney _ ?”

“He did grow up in the East End,” Harry muttered back, thinking about the Diary. Dean whirled on him, but Harry was already back to listening.

“HONESTLY DIDN’ EVEN RECOGNIZE POTTER AT FIRST ON ACCOUNT OF ‘E WAS SO BLOODY TINY! ELEVEN YEAR OLDS ARE MINISCULE BUT ‘E WAS EVEN MINISCULER! WERE YOU EVEN BLOODY FEEDIN’ ‘IM, DUMBLEDORE? NEVERMIND, YOU PROB’LY DON’ EVEN LIVE WID’ ‘IM, YOU BLASTED GIT. WHERE THE FOOK’S POTTER LIVE THEN? WHY AIN’T ANYONE SEEM TO KNOW THIS, HM? YOU COULDN’ BE – couldn’t be –  _ really? _ ”

The entire hall was silent as the Howler began to shiver.

“Don’t get comfortable,  _ Dumbledore _ . This howler may be over but I ain’t done witcha.”

The letter ripped itself to shreds, and the hall fell immediately into an uproar. Harry instinctively grabbed a number of platters of food, aided by Ron and Neville, and Hermione and Ginny covered their evacuation from the hall.

“I was not  _ tiny _ ,” Harry fumed once they had relocated to an abandoned classroom a couple of hallways away. “How dare he!”

Instead of agreement, he looked up to find everyone peering skeptically at him. “What?”

“Harry…” Hermione said slowly. “You have to admit you are a bit shorter than most of us.”

“It was worse in first year,” Ron said. “Remember you only came up to my shoulder before your growth spurt, mate?”

“That has nothing to do with anything – ”

“He was an adult the whole time,” Neville mused. “I mean. Look at how small the firsties look to us now, and then imagine being – what did he say, sixty-something?”

“If he’s sixty-eight now, he’d have been sixty-four back when we were in first year.”

“He’s so fucking  _ old _ ,” Ginny ground out, gnawing angrily on a piece of bacon.

“He didn’t look sixty-eight,” said Ron. “Where’s all his bloody gray hair?”

“Didn’t you hear, Ronnie?” Ginny simpered. “He’s  _ immortal _ .”

“I think, if you manage to be immortal, you still have to suffer the gray hair with the rest of us,” Ron grumbled. “Also, where’s he get off being immortal in the first place? That hardly seems fair either.”

“He did  _ something _ to himself,” Harry mused. “In the graveyard he talked about how he’d gone farther down the path to immortality than anyone else or some such bollocks. But it sounds like he’ll still  _ die _ if he gets hit with an AK. He just… hangs out until he can get a new body if that happens. As some weird evil spirit who can possess people.”

“Ugh,” Hermione suddenly made a disgusted noise. “He’s a bloody whack-a-mole game.”

They got some mileage out of the idea of whack-a-Voldemort that day. Ron and Ginny collaborated on a picture after getting the details of whack-a-mole from Harry and Hermione, and that picture, in turn, was tacked up on the Gryffindor common room message board. Harry added a side note approving the depiction of Voldemort as “fairly accurate, albeit not realistic”, and went to bed feeling satisfied with a job well done.

The next day was quiet enough, for a day at Hogwarts near the end of term. Harry dodged a number of maddening inquiries about the nature of his kidnapping in fourth year that he definitely did not want to answer, thanks very much, as he had no desire to think much about the graveyard. Umbridge was missing all day. A number of Hufflepuffs came forward to apologize to Harry for treating him badly over the Tournament debacle, and for distrusting his account of Cedric’s death. Harry gave them frosty nods, for the most part, not trusting himself to speak.

He could not believe it had taken a Howler from Voldemort himself to finally make them consider that,  _ just maybe _ , Harry wasn’t to blame for any of the bullshit that had gone down that year.

The next morning, though, things just had to go to chaos once again. Harry was sitting at the table, nicely minding his own business and scooping a few fried eggs onto his plate, when the noise levels around him dropped suddenly and abruptly. He looked at the head table with a feeling of dread, and groaned long and low when he saw the polished red letter hovering above Dumbledore’s head as the older man tried to grab it out of the air. With his hands, Harry noted with interest – why, had his wand not worked?

This time, McGonagall actually evacuated her chair before the letter unsealed itself. Harry snorted, watching as Hagrid stood up to allow her to take his chair on the end, and then the voice of the Dark Lord boomed across the hall.

“ARE YOU COMPETING FOR MY BLOODY POSITION, ALBUS DUMBLEDORE?!  _ MUGGLES?! _ REALLY?!”

“Huh?” Ron said from the other side of the table. It roughly echoed Harry’s thoughts on the matter.

“EVEN I WOULD NEVER LEAVE A MAGICAL CHILD WITH MUGGLES! THAT’S ASKING FOR TROUBLE AND YOU DAMN WELL KNOW IT, AND IF YOU DON’T KNOW IT, YOU HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO LITERALLY EVERY ABUSE CASE THAT’S EVER GONE PUBLIC ENOUGH TO REQUIRE THE SCHOOL TO GO INTO DAMAGE CONTROL MODE!”

All the humor abruptly left every muscle in Harry’s body. He switched in an instant from tense with anticipation to lax with shock – he had to fight to keep his grip on his fork and not drop it against his plate. Surely that would make a noise. Draw even more attention to him…

It couldn’t be. Voldemort wasn’t talking about  _ him _ , about Harry.

“AND TO PUT HARRY BLOODY POTTER WITH  _ MUGGLES! _ MUGGLES THAT AFTER LITERALLY FIVE MINUTES OF BARELY COVERT OBSERVATION CAN BE PEGGED AS MAGIC-HATERS! I RATHER HESITATE TO PUT IT INTO WORDS BUT FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, DUMBLEDORE, YOU’VE EARNED THE AWE OF LORD VOLDEMORT – THAT’S POSITIVELY DASTARDLY! AND FURTHER, I SHALL NEVER BE ABLE TO TOP IT, BECAUSE  _ I _ HAVE  _ STANDARDS _ ABOUT CHILDREN!”

Maybe he could just slide under the table. And die. Dying would be preferable at this point.

“I’M SURE YOU’LL BE HAPPY TO HEAR ABOUT HOW THE ADULT DURSLEYS ARE  _ DEAD _ . I MADE CERTAIN OF  _ THAT _ .”

Or maybe he was already dead. This was probably some weird, weird afterlife. Oh, that made a lot of sense! Maybe Voldemort really  _ had _ gotten him at the Ministry.

A lot of eyes were swiveling towards Harry. He did not want to see that, so he switched the direction of his focus from the screaming letter to the plate in front of him. The fried eggs didn’t look nearly as appetizing as they had moments ago.

The Howler went on.

“I FOUND YOUR PET SQUIB, BY THE WAY.” Pet… squib? Harry thought numbly. “OH YES. DO YOU KNOW SHE KEPT COPIES OF ALL HER REPORTS? OH, WERE THERE EVER REPORTS. SHE EVEN HAD SOME PICTURES OF THE BOY. I UNDERSTAND YOU WERE RAISED IN THE EIGHTEEN HUNDREDS WHEN CHILDREN WEREN’T CONSIDERED TO BE REAL PEOPLE, DUMBLEDORE, BUT FOR MORGANA’S SAKE, MOVE WITH THE TIMES! ALSO,  _ HARRY POTTER? _ AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE INVESTED IN HIS WELFARE? DON’T YOU GIVE A DAMN? WHAT AM I SAYING, OF COURSE YOU DON’T. YOU NEVER DO.”

He couldn’t stay here anymore. Slowly, Harry started to reach down for his bag and his invisibility cloak, trying not to move too quickly or obviously. If he could only get it over him he could get out of the hall without anyone the wiser.

“BY THE WAY, POTTER, DON’T YOU FUCKING LEAVE. THIS IS BEING READ IN THE MORNING SO I KNOW YOU’RE THERE. THIS CONCERNS YOU, FUCKING STAY HERE, YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT. I SEARCHED THE HOUSE BEFORE I RAZED IT.”

Harry abruptly and vividly remembered that his name was scrawled onto the wall of the cupboard under the stairs in bright green crayon. He stopped groping for his cloak – not so much because he was listening to Voldemort, as because his chest was clenched up in horror. He never really talked about – because it was over and it didn’t  _ matter _ . But Voldemort had seen, Voldemort knew, and –

Wait. Had he said  _ razed _ ?

“FURTHERMORE, IN CASE ANYBODY WAS WONDERING. THE HOUSE HAD ILLEGAL BLOOD WARDS ON IT, THAT IS, ILLEGAL CIRCA 1981 WHEN I PRESUME THEY WERE CAST. TUT, TUT, DUMBLEDORE. NOT THAT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ANY CONCERN OF MINE, THEY DON’T EVEN WORK. I WALTZED RIGHT ON IN WITHOUT A CARE. IMAGINE, DUMBLEDORE! IT’S REALLY NOT DIFFICULT TO DISCOVER THAT LILY EVANS HAD A MUGGLE SISTER, JUST GO ASK FOR CENSUS RECORDS! THEN USE THE YELLOW PAGES AND A PUBLIC PHONE BOOTH AND LORD BLOODY VOLDEMORT HAS THE ENTIRE ADDRESS WRITTEN ON HIS DAY PLANNER, AND IT ONLY TOOK ME TWO HOURS TO FIND YOUR ALLEGED EXTREMELY-WELL-PROTECTED SAVIOR! PLEASE GO AHEAD AND IMAGINE IF I HAD ACTUALLY BEEN INTENSELY LOOKING FOR HIM ALL THIS TIME! GO ON. I’LL WAIT.”

There was a pause in the Howler, but it still floated there, thrumming, so it clearly wasn’t done. The hall appeared to be in a state of shock. Harry couldn’t bother to assess further. He was torn between glee that he wouldn’t have to go back, shock that the house he had grown up in was gone – if you could even call it growing up, he privately acknowledged – and horror that  _ Voldemort knew _ , and, if the Dark Lord was to be believed, could have  _ found him _ in less than a day.

Which. If Harry assumed that this was true, begged a question of – why hadn’t he? Surely he had wanted Harry dead last summer? Surely escaping from the graveyard alive had been an insult too grievous to be ignored? Or had he just been focusing on getting a nose back and regrowing his hair? Harry could almost believe that, and it made him rather glad he’d been at Hogwarts when the Dark Lord finally did go looking.

But, well – what was he going to do  _ this summer? _

Sirius, his mind replied – and suddenly Harry’s heart lifted. Suddenly it didn’t matter that the Dursleys were dead and 4 Privet Drive razed, because surely the next safest place would be the Fideliused Grimmauld, and  _ nobody _ could complain about  _ that! _

He was going to get to live with Sirius. He would finally get to live with Sirius!

(Because of  _ Voldemort _ , said the back of his mind, but he ignored that part of him.)

“DONE THINKING?” the Howler started up again. “I DO HOPE THE REMAINDER OF THE STUDENTS AND STAFF WERE THINKING TOO, BUT CIRCE KNOWS CRITICAL THINKING ALWAYS SEEMS TO BE FAR TOO MUCH TO HOPE FOR AMONGST THE WIZARD-RAISED. IF I FIND OUT ANYONE HAS BEEN BOTHERING POTTER FOR MORE DETAILS ABOUT HIS CHILDHOOD THAN WHAT WAS SAID HERE I MAY HAVE TO FIND MYSELF MAKING HOME VISITS, AND I DO INDEED HAVE MY SOURCES. DO NOT, CHILDREN, MAKE ME MAKE HOME VISITS. GOOD DAY.”

The letter shredded itself into nothing, and Harry yanked the cloak over his shoulders and fled.

Voldemort collapsed into his favorite armchair and put his head in his hands. The toast and jam he had prepared for breakfast stared back at him – he hadn’t eaten at all. Instead, the image of a clinically neat house played in his mind, refusing to leave him alone despite all his occlumency attempts.

It was a different sort of hell than the orphanage had been. But it had undoubtedly been hell. For all his ignorance of certain social mores in his species, Voldemort thought he was fairly adept at discerning what circumstances would or would not be hellish for children. Young children, especially, were easy to determine. Merely take what he had never had, and check whether those items were available. If not, then –

He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and took in a slow breath. Not for the first time, he wished he had taken more time with the arithmancy of souls before he had made his first horcrux.

(Yet he had been so certain that he wouldn’t survive a summer in a bombed-out London, what else could he have done?)

He didn’t really know what he could have done. But he did know that there had been a reason he felt such bone-deep rage at the man who sent magical children to hostile muggle environments over and over with no sign of abatement.

Unable to force himself to come out from under the cloak, Harry skipped morning classes. He considered coming out for lunch, but thought better of it. Unfortunately, Hermione and Ron had somehow managed to track him down while he waffled in front of the doorway to the great hall, and dragged him in anyway.

“You have to eat some time,” Hermione huffed as she forced him onto the bench. Ron was piling up three plates, and one ended up in front of Harry. He took a bite rather mechanically, and forced himself to look around the hall, just to assess the situation. To his surprise and suspicion, everyone seemed to be studiously ignoring him. It was a relief, too, admittedly – but it seemed… wrong.

He went to class, just to see what happened. Everything went oddly normally, which also seemed wrong. Why wasn’t anybody staring at him?

“Nobody is staring at me,” he told Hermione later, as they claimed their favored niche table in the common room for studying and homework (and procrastination, and chess) purposes. She stared at him for a long moment, and then slapped a hand to her face.

“What did you  _ think _ they were going to do?” she asked. “After a threat like that?”

“Why would they listen to Voldemort, though?” Harry asked.

Hermione just stared at him again, before opening a rather thick tome of arithmantic matrices and disappearing from the mortal world. Harry eventually gave up on trying to do any homework, as he was far too distracted. Instead, he headed upstairs, drew his curtains, and called Sirius.

“Padfoot?” he whispered.

A moment later, Sirius swung into view. “Prongslet!” he cried. “Everything alright still? No visions?”

“No visions,” Harry said. The grin that his subconscious had been threatening him with since the news of the Dursleys’ demise finally slid onto his face. “Guess what, Sirius?”

“What?”

“I’m probably going to get to stay with you all summer!” He paused. “Actually, know what, I  _ am _ going to be able to stay with you all summer! There’s literally no better options.”

“What are you talking about, pup?”

“Well, I can’t go back to the Dursleys  _ now _ , can I?” Harry said triumphantly.

Then he paused. Squinted down at the mirror, where Sirius was looking bewildered.

“Did you… not hear?” he asked.

“Hear what?” Sirius asked, his face shifting through a number of emotions and settling for something close to worried. “What’s happened?”

“I… I really thought Dumbledore would tell you,” Harry whispered. “I mean, term ends in a week!”

“Tell me what?” Sirius asked. His face had shifted to serious, much like his homonym. “Harry, pup, tell me  _ what? _ ”

“Er,” Harry said. He suddenly felt a bit badly for grinning over it. But – he’d thought Sirius – “Listen,” he said. “In my defense, I thought you knew, and when you didn’t say anything I thought you didn’t care – which is fine with me, I don’t care either.”

“Pup, please get to the point.”

“The Dursleys are dead,” Harry said. “Er. At least Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are. Allegedly. Voldemort killed them. Or he said he did.”

“Oh,” Sirius said. “He – how? When did you find this out? Dumbledore knows?” His eyes narrowed.

“Well, I mean, it was a Howler? Be pretty hard for him not to know, since it was a Howler for him.”

“Howler? What? Pup, what in Merlin’s name is going on? You’re not making any sense to me.”

Harry gaped down at the mirror. “Haven’t you heard? Voldemort’s been sending Dumbledore Howlers! One broke two days ago and the second one came just this morning – he said in it that he’d found Privet Drive after only two hours of looking and murdered ‘the adult Dursleys’, I think he put it.”

“He what!” Sirius looked panicky. “Shit. Oh fuck. Yeah pup you’re definitely going to stay with me, you’re coming right to Grimmauld from the train, no matter what anyone has to say about it, you understand? I don’t even want you going onto the muggle side of the platform. Remus will be there to pick you up.”

Harry grinned. “Really?”

“Of course! Why would you ever think otherwise? But pup, are you alright? You aunt and uncle…”

Harry’s mouth twisted uncomfortably.

“Sirius…” he said. “Look, I know that they’re – family – ” (if family locks you in small, dark spaces and doesn’t feed you, said a part of his brain that he usually tried to ignore) “ – but I honestly don’t see them all that much even during the summers. They’re not really interested in magic. It’s sort of disrupted their lives a lot. So. You know.”

He shrugged, hoping that would get it over with. Sirius peered at him for a moment longer, and then sighed. “If you’re sure, pup. But you can talk to me if you want, right? Any time.”

“Of course,” Harry said.

“Remember,” Sirius said sternly. “Meet Remus at King’s Cross. Don’t leave the wizarding side of the platform.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t forget.” How could he?

“I’ve got to go let Remus know, but call us if the snake bastard sends any more threats, alright? And I expect you to call me tomorrow too.”

Harry nodded and promised, and they put their respective mirrors away.

No more Howlers arrived from Voldemort the next day. Nor the next, or the next, until Harry thought maybe he was safe from further breakfast intrusions until the end of the school year. There was a strange atmosphere in the castle for those few days, not one Harry was used to feeling from an outsider's point of view. He could tell that the majority of the students were staring at somebody. Usually, though, the target of such stares was Harry - but that wasn't the case this time. Harry still found himself unnerved by it, but as time went by and it had continued, he slowly found himself slipping into a state of mind that felt almost peaceful. Perhaps not quite peaceful - Harry wasn't sure what peaceful really felt like. This, though, reminded him strongly of the better times at the Dursleys, back before he had known about magic. It was a feeling that had been lost to him once he had started at Hogwarts, and everyone started to stare at "Famous Harry Potter".

For once, Harry didn't feel tense because people were looking that him. They weren't paying as much attention to him, either. He could, for the first time in years, settle down in the back of the common room to do his homework, and actually  _ focus _ on it without struggling with his urge to glance over his shoulder constantly.

"The seventh years are planning something," Hermione said firmly on the fifth day of this odd, almost peaceful state of affairs.

Harry looked up from his third year potions textbook - he'd found that his ability to actually focus for long periods of time was highlighting how little he'd retained of every potions lesson he'd ever had. "Sorry?" he said. "What's that got to do with us, exactly?" He glanced at Ron, who shrugged.

Hermione sighed. "They've only been planning this for a few days," she continued. "Based on the timing, I'd say it's most likely that whatever the catalyst is, it's got something to do with those Howlers Voldemort's been sending."

"What if I don't care, Hermione?" Harry asked. He tried to turn back to his notes.

"I still can't believe you're actually studying, mate. OWLs are over!"

"Harry, a whole seventh of the castle is planning something inspired by Lord Voldemort and  _ you're _ not in the least interested? You  _ really _ don't care?"

Well, Harry thought moodily. When she put it that way…

As it turned out, the seventh years  _ were _ planning something. Even Fred and George had somehow made reappearances, popping out of a previously unknown hole in the wall of Gryffindor common room to assorted cheering and mock-bowing. Firewhiskey and butterbeer crates were dragged in behind them, and the house as a whole quickly got down to what Gryffindor did best.

Early that morning, even before the sun rose, Hermione was in the boy's dorm shaking Harry and Ron awake. "They're on the move!" she hissed.

“Wha?” Harry grumbled muzzily. “Whazzhappenin’?”

“The seventh years, Harry!” Hermione hissed. “Fred and George have just gone out their secret passage, and they took all the other seventh years with them!”

“Couldn’t they have waited for a nicer time of day?” Ron mumbled. He was rubbing his eyes blearily. “Be more humane.”

“I’m sure they’re used to it,” Harry mumbled as he tried to throw his robes and shoes on at the same time as he was digging through his bag for the invisibility cloak.

“Used to what?”

“Getting up early,” Harry said. “For pranks?” he added, when Ron still looked bewildered.

“Oh, yeah. Probably.”

They scuttled out the portrait hole under the cloak, rubbing elbows rather uncomfortably. Harry wondered, not for the first time, how on earth all four Marauders had ever managed to fit under it as they grew older and bigger. Maybe they’d had to draw lots? He would have to remember to ask Sirius this summer.

“Funny,” Harry muttered once the three of them had cleared the hallway where the Fat Lady could hear (and possibly tattle on) them. “They’re all in the Great Hall. There’s even Slytherins, or at least, some of them are sitting at the Slytherin table…” He squinted at the names on the Map, willing himself to remember the names of the Slytherin upper-years, which he usually didn’t bother to do.

Hermione tugged the map from his hands. “That’s all the seventh years in the school,” she said seriously.

“Well, come on then,” Ron said. “Not much use standing around and blabbering.”

They puttered down stairwells and secret passages towards the Hall. Halfway there, the seventh years all began to stream out of the room, and they had to switch direction a number of times to avoid being trampled. The majority of the older mages ended up near the Headmaster’s office, and the trio watched in bewilderment as ‘Albus Dumbledore’ followed the mass back out. Together, everyone headed directly for the entrance hall.

“Let’s move,” Harry muttered. They pressed on.

Dumbledore wasn’t visible in the mass of seventh years that they encountered. As the trio snuck into the atrium, hugging the wall in an attempt not to be noticed, Harry caught sight of a small group of Slytherin names separate from the mass. They were heading up from the dungeons – Harry thought he saw the name ‘Draco Malfoy’ in the middle, the only non-seventh year besides himself, Ron, and Hermione that he had yet seen.

He nudged his friends roughly in the ribs, and gestured at the Map. Hermione made a musing noise. Ron made a muffled scoff.

The seventh years were being oddly quiet and solemn. It made Malfoy’s loud whine of “I keep telling you this isn’t a good idea!” even louder and whinier than he usually was.

“Shut it,” said one of the seventh-year Slytherin girls. “Your father is just a glorified manservant at this point, Malfoy, everyone knows it.”

“He is  _ not _ – !”

Whatever Lucius Malfoy was not, Draco Malfoy shut up when he was shoved into the pack of seventh years. Instead, he gave a loud gasp, and though Harry had lost sight of the other teen, Malfoy’s strident voice gave a clear sense of his expression. “Fine!” he cried. “Fine, I’ll bring you, but I am  _ not _ responsible for what happens afterwards!”

“Aw, ickle Malfoy is worried about us,” Harry heard one of the twins say. “Don’t worry, ickle Malfoy, we can take care of ourselves.”

“I think you’re all  _ idiots _ ,” Malfoy snarled.

“Just give us the blasted portkey coordinates.”

There was muffled cursing, and a few spells Harry didn’t recognize. Hermione was concentrating fiercely, muttering under her breath. Suddenly, she grabbed both Harry and Ron by the wrist and surged forwards. Harry had to grope for the invisibility cloak to make sure it didn’t slip off of them.

“Hermione, what – ” he tried to hiss.

The world dissolved into a maelstrom.

Voldemort stared out the window. He forced himself to look away, and counted silently to five as he fought the urge to throw the window open and lean out in a rather undignified fashion. Hopefully, when he looked back, he would not see the same incoherent sight.

He looked back. There was still a mass of school children mulling around just outside the gates to the Manor grounds.

“Why are we here?” Harry whispered frantically. Beside him, Ron and Hermione were silent, so Harry could see no other option but returning to the sight before him.

The entire seventh year was mulling around, conferring in some way that made sense to them but not to Harry. Maybe it made sense to Hermione, but if it did, she was busy thinking about it and wasn’t in the mood to share with the boys. Dumbledore had disappeared under the weight of the crowd – Harry assumed that he was still present, but then again, the Map was useless here, wherever that was. He couldn’t be certain. Draco Malfoy was still here, which Harry was certain of because he could see the boy standing to the side of the crowd, looking rather ill. Beyond the field of heads, Harry could see a pair of wrought iron gates, shot through with the carvings of leaves and feathers, rising into the air.

“So where are we, d’you reckon?” he muttered to Ron, because Hermione still seemed distracted.

“No idea,” Ron muttered back.

They watched for a while. Harry wondered distantly how they were going to get back to Hogwarts, but that was a concern for later. At this rate every house would be losing points in massive amounts once they all got back, so the threat of losing Gryffindor the Cup wasn’t quite present.

Anyway, this was sure to be more interesting, whatever it was.

Based on the way nobody screamed, Harry was reasonably sure that he was the first person to catch sight of Voldemort. The Dark Lord was up a tree, walking carefully along a thick branch that reached over the fence from a tree just inside the property boundaries. Harry immediately revised his opinion of where they were to ‘Some Pureblood Estate’, and held very still. Voldemort (probably) couldn’t see through invisibility cloaks, so as long as Harry didn’t do anything dramatic, then he would likely remain unnoticed.

He eyed the man carefully regardless, just in case he could do something ridiculous like see invisible people. Voldemort was dressed in a different sort of outfit than Harry had ever seen him in – looser clothing, a robe with a longer skirt and larger bell sleeves, unlike the more tightly fitted robes that Harry was familiar with. He wondered if the tighter robes were some sort of battle outfit. Did that mean that this was Voldemort’s idea of casual wear?

He tried to imagine the word ‘Voldemort’ and ‘casual’ in the same image, and couldn’t come up with anything.

Nobody else gave any sign that they had noticed Voldemort until the Dark Lord dropped silently to the ground, crept up behind Draco, and tapped the other teen on the shoulder with a decidedly unimpressed look. Harry watched with a satisfied smirk as Draco shrieked and whirled.

Two hands gripped Harry’s arms tightly from either side. Ron hissed furiously, directly into Harry’s ear “That’s  _ him _ , innit?”

“Mm,” Harry muttered.

“Git.”

“Ronald,  _ shut up _ .”

Harry proceeded to witness one of the very strangest moments in his entire life as Voldemort scanned the crowd of seventh-years, and the seventh-year crowd did nothing but look back at him in silence. Nobody moved, except for Draco, who had somehow scooted about ten feet away from Voldemort with one motion and was now on the ground for reasons unknown.

“Are you You-Know-Who?” somebody shouted from the back half of the crowd. Next to Harry, Hermione let out a groan.

“Is there some reason you’re all here?” Voldemort said waspishly.

“I was told you want to kill muggleborns!” a different voice shouted. “Is that true?”

“Ah,” Harry heard Hermione whisper. He didn’t pay much attention, because Voldemort was – incomprehensibly – blinking as if the anonymous yeller had said something so ridiculous that it barely merited a reply.

“Excuse me?” he said. “The magical population of Britain is barely self-sustaining as it is!”

Harry stared at the man. He knew Voldemort couldn’t see him, but he was staring all the same.

There was a susurrus of noise from the crowd. Somebody else yelled “Do you have some kind of a political platform?”

It was about this point that Harry lost track of what exactly was going on. Voldemort started to give an honest-to-Merlin lecture about his “political platform”, as if he were a candidate for Prime Minister giving a speech on the telly. Harry listened only enough to understand the basics of his positions – there was some stuff about taking muggleborns away from their parents which he felt rather opposed to on principle and for Hermione’s sake.

(And yet, all the same, it would have been nice if somebody had taken him away from the Dursleys when  _ he _ was three, and he couldn’t stop imagining that no matter how hard he tried.)

Then came some sort of agitation about mandatory cultural orientation courses for muggleborns, which didn’t make much sense to Harry, because Voldemort talked a lot about things Harry had never heard of – and yet, many of the seventh-years were sort of nodding along. Some more things about bringing back a number of courses which had been removed from Hogwarts, which Harry didn’t really care about one way or the other until he mentioned comprehensive Dark Arts education – and then Harry felt quite opposed, but Voldemort launched into some kind of justifying explanation. Apparently he’d fucked  _ himself _ up with Dark Arts at age 15, simply because the pertinent information was censored – so he wanted everyone to know why they… shouldn’t… do that?

Harry wasn’t sure he understood. Wasn’t it enough to know that something was Dark?

Around the middle of the lecture (did it count as a speech?) Harry noticed Lucius Malfoy and a woman he supposed must be Mrs. Malfoy standing in the threshold of the gates, gaping. They didn’t do anything more, so Harry didn’t pay any more attention to them, because Voldemort wasn’t, either.

The man was now talking about the need for a re-evaluation of the assumptions made by the Statute of Secrecy, because the Muggle Crown didn’t actually know about the magical world anymore, so they may as well be a different country anyway. Harry thought that sounded far too complicated, so he didn’t think about that, either. Instead, he decided that maybe he ought to examine the faint popping noises that had sounded just behind him, and the gasp of shock that sounded suspiciously of McGonagall.

It was in fact Professor McGonagall. She stood next to Snape, clutching the man’s arm and looking pale. Snape didn’t look too great either, Harry noted with some vindication. His mouth was moving, opening and closing, but no sound was coming out – at least, none loud enough for Harry to hear over the sound of Voldemort’s speech-making voice as he still kept fielding questions from the seventh-years.

“This is Potter’s fault,” Snape finally said. It was the first thing loud enough for Harry to hear, and before he could remind himself that it was probably a bad idea to reveal that he was around when Voldemort was right nearby, the injustice of it all chose that moment to get to him. Maybe it was the sneer that took over Snape’s face as he stared directly at Harry, infuriatingly accurate even though he had no way of knowing Harry was there. Perhaps it was the fact that in the background, Voldemort was talking about requiring Hogwarts professors to actually teach their subjects in a way that allowed students to learn them, which was another thing that Harry pointedly wasn’t thinking about.

Either way, it seemed like the height of wisdom to throw off the cloak and allow five years of bitten back retorts to rush out of him. The shock on Snape’s face was enough, even, to buoy his mood enough to forget that Voldemort was right there.

He got so involved in yelling at Snape that he did not notice Ron, behind him, carefully picking up and throwing on the cloak.

Ron gulped and held his breath as he crept down the walkway to the manor. The snake git - admittedly less snake looking right now - was still doing the weird pace-and-lecture routine. Ron didn't have the patience to listen to a git like that, no matter how human he looked now, nor how sensible he sounded as he talked about the need for proper muggleborn cultural integration or critical formative periods or - whatever in Merlin's name the git was talking about. That sort of stuff was Hermione's forte, not Ron's, and Ron knew it well.

The main doors had all been left ajar. Ron expected this was the only reason he got in at all, and with almost no trouble. The atrium beyond the front doors was lined with marble and gilded panels of wood, and made the absolutely perfect picture of a place for a family of snobs like the Malfoys. It didn't exactly look like a place that a Dark Bastard would hide out, but this was only the atrium. The really dark decor was probably further in.

Ron hated all of it on sight.

Aimlessly, the teen selected a corridor and proceeded down it. He made sure to remain under the cloak, especially as he passed quietly under the eyes of the ancient Malfoy family portraits lining the hallway. Finally, he emerged in a massive dining room done up in silver and adamantium siding, with a dark marble floor covered in a thick green rug. The candles hanging in the air were black, and smelled of some sort of musk that filled the room like a thick spice.

Ron glanced about and decided to go up the staircase that hugged the wall on the other side of the room. There were even more corridors and portraits up here, and Ron crept about a bit more warily. Here, a library - there, some sort of study. At the far end of the main upper hallway, there was a pair of thick, black double doors with golden handles.

Ron eyed the doors. The doors seemed to almost hum. He felt rather certain what sort of room was likely behind these doors.

The air wobbled like a mirage when Ron tried to put his hand near one of the handles. He withdrew it carefully, imagining all kind of terrible wards, hexes, and curses set to destroy intruders. A man like that wouldn't give a shit about how ridiculously over the top they were.

There must be another way, though. Ron thought about this.

What did he know about Voldemort? The bloke was a maniac. He was sixty eight years old or something close to that. He was pretty damn magically powerful. He was an orphan. He had been in Slytherin house. He was the last remaining descendant of the Slytherin lineage. He could speak Parseltongue…

Huh.

Ron thought very hard for a moment. Then he made a strangled, gutteral hissing noise from the back of his throat.

The black double doors swung very slowly open. Take  _ that _ , Dark Tosser.

"Who's the king?" Ron whispered to himself as he carefully crept in. "Weasley is our King…"

He was still careful not to touch much of anything as he explored Voldemort's private - sort of an apartment in the Malfoy estate, Ron supposed. Man like that would probably be mad enough to curse his own belongings just in case an intruder got in, even when the front door was already warded to hell and back.

To his surprise, Voldemort's private living space didn't seem very much like the living space of a Dark Lord. There was no torture chamber, for one, and the windows weren't covered with dark and ominous drapery, either. Instead, the daylight was allowed in, and what that daylight illuminated wasn't anything like what Ron had expected.

There was a library room that was clearly space expanded, with an armchair in the back of the room tucked into a comfortable niche with a very comfortable looking green and silver throw tossed across it. On top of the throw was a small pile of books and a capped fountain pen. There were a few tables in the library room as well, also covered with books and parchments and inkwells and a few snapped and broken quills. There were scraps of paper on the floor and ink stains on the dark gray carpet.

There was a study of some kind which seemed to be doing double duty as a dining room and a place to hang out in winter, if the fireplace meant anything. The table was positioned near the bay windows and held at least three or four meals worth of backlogged dirty dishes. Did that mean Voldemort actually ate food like a normal human, Ron thought as he stared at the fine china. Imagine that.

There was a bedroom. Ron didn't spend as much time in there, not really wanting to think about Voldemort's sleeping habits, which were almost as unnerving as Voldemort's eating habits. He did notice, though, that the bed was a canopy bed, and that the comforter was just as rumpled as Ron usually left his in the mornings. He didn't really know how to feel about that.

There was one final door. It was firmly closed, but when Ron put his hand near it, it didn't make his palm itch. Carefully, he turned the handle.

Inside it was very, very dark. Ron squinted, wondering why the blinds were drawn so firmly. Then, on his second glance, he saw that it was more than merely the blinds being drawn - the windows had been actively blacked out to block all traces of the sun. The only light in the room was a faint, nearly nonexistent fairy light, floating in the far corner of the room right by the floor. It was partly obscured by furniture, but combined with the crack of light from the doorway, Ron could see enough to understand the basic layout of it all. There was a bed against one wall, its thick black canopies drawn to obscure most of the mattress. There was a couch, facing away from the door, which seemed unusual to Ron. His mum always arranged couches so that they didn't ignore the doorways of whatever room they were in. There was a low bookcase against the other wall, with a small assortment of books on it, and…

Ron squinted harder, and crept inside. Behind him, the door swung slowly closed, moving so quietly that Ron only knew it had shifted by the sudden loss of light. He waited for a moment until his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and then took another look at the items on the bookshelf.

Yes. That was definitely a stuffed snake.

What in the name of Merlin's wrinkly ballsack?

There were a few other stuffed animals with the snake, as well - a whale, and a teddy bear, and a round, soft ball of black fur that Ron thought might be an imitation puffskein. Why did Voldemort have stuffed animals? That didn't fit with the image of 'terrifying Dark Lord' in any way that Ron could imagine. Where did he get off, anyway, Ron thought furiously. How could you like stuffed animals and then go out and murder people? That made  _ no _ sense.

He had already noticed the books on the shelf, but Ron now saw that they were mostly children's books. Muggle children's books, too, from the looks of them. He'd certainly never heard of  _ Rikki Tikki Tavi _ before, so it had to be muggle. But again, why would Voldemort have those?

At least the chess set on the lowest shelf was clearly a wizarding chess set, from the way the pieces had propped up the lid of the box to get a look at Ron. As he looked down at them, one waved to him, and he realized that he'd thrown back the cloak in his total bewilderment and his need to examine the stuffed animals more closely. He huffed at himself for his miscalculation, but fortunately, chess sets couldn't talk.

"Hey you little buggers," he whispered to them, and waved.

The chess pieces poked out their little arms and waved back. Behind Ron, somebody made a questioning noise.

There was a person  _ in here?! _ Ron whirled in panic and looked down at the couch to see -

A pale face stared up at him. The eyes were a bit squinted, as if their owner was having trouble seeing. A mop of black hair that looked almost as mussed as Harry's often did sat on the stranger's head, and a pair of sharp cheekbones cut into their face, giving them a terribly gaunt sort of expression. It wasn’t a look that Ron was used to seeing on a teenager his own age.

“ _ Er _ ,” Ron said stupidly.

The stranger stared at Ron, and blinked slowly.

“Hi,” Ron said. “Er. I’m Ron. Er. Ron Weasley. Sorry, I’m a bloody mess.”

Another blink. The stranger’s head tilted slightly to the side, sending a wave of hair falling into their eyes.

“Er, so,” Ron said slowly. “Just, to check. You know you’re, errrr… you’re in You-Know-Who’s personal quarters? Are you alright?”

His voice had risen a bit as he spoke. The stranger, though, flinched as it rose, and made a strange whining noise, leaning away from Ron. He blinked, panicked for a moment, and then slapped a hand to his mouth.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “You don’t like loud noises?”

For a long moment, there was no reaction. Then, slowly, a very faint nod. Ron might have missed it if he hadn’t been carefully staring at the stranger, trying to decipher their facial expressions. He felt as though the stranger’s face was familiar. He hadn’t seen it before – but it was familiar all the same. He thought that he ought to recognise them, or at least, to realise that he knew them, but nothing came to mind.

“Okay, I’ll just keep whispering then,” Ron said. “Is it okay if I come sit?”

The stranger did nothing. Then, Ron noticed the eyes flicking to the empty space at the other end of the couch, and Ron shuffled a bit closer, taking the cloak off all the way. When the stranger didn’t tense up, or make any sort of noise, he sat down.

“So, back to what I was talking about before,” he whispered. “You know you’re in You-Know-Who’s personal quarters? Are you alright? Do you need help?”

Blink. Faint head tilt.

“... D’you know who You-Know-Who is? Blink once for yes and twice for no.”

Two blinks.  _ No _ .

“Ah. Er. Right,” Ron huffed. “Er, tall… pale bloke. Black hair. Evil cheekbones. Red eyes… honestly, mate, you even look a bit like him I guess, ‘cept your hair’s a bit longer and your eyes aren’t red.”

A thought struck him. He paused in horror for a moment.

The stranger did look a lot like Voldemort. He was a teenager who was too thin, and his pale skin was almost luminescent in the enforced dimness of the room. But he looked a lot like Voldemort, or perhaps, he looked like he could  _ be _ Voldemort, if only he were given more body weight, aged up, and made more angular overall. If he got a haircut and put on some clothes that weren’t obviously pajamas.

“Is…” Ron forced himself to swallow. “Is your name Tom?”

_ Yes _ , and a confused sort of tilt to the eyebrows.

Well, Ron thought, trying to work out his emotions. So there was a Voldemort out there lecturing about politics. There was similarly a Tom Riddle in here, lying in a dark room, not speaking, dressed in pajamas and apparently unaware of who Voldemort was.

“Do you know the name Voldemort?” he whispered, before he could think better of saying the name. It almost choked him on its way out of his lungs, but he thought fiercely of Harry, and how easily Harry always said it.

A slight widening of the eyes, and then a single blink.  _ Yes _ . A faint quirk of the lips at the edges, as if Tom were trying to smile.

Ron sat back a bit.

“Well,” he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. “Alright. Sure. Do you play chess, Tom?”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to turn 'Cockney Voldemort' into a common use tag even if it kills me.


End file.
